Finally got my Reading Gender Post up!!

“The External Feminine” scene that hit home with me was the opening scene where all the women are in the salon. The scene takes place in a beauty shop, which is your typical beauty shop with a bunch of women sitting around talking about anything and everything they can. This scene gives the exact stereotype of what a beauty salon really is. This scene hit home with me because my mother use to go to the beauty salon to get her hair done, while she was there would learn things about me that normally she would never hear if she had never gone to the salon. My brother and I use to joke that when our mother would go to the beauty salon it was really like her going to the “mom’s club” because there at the salon all the moms would be in there gossiping about all their boys. They would gossip about their boys to find out what they do on the weekends and what they do after school. This is similar to the scene in “The External Feminine” because a man is in the store trying to sell the salon the magnificent hair dryer so all the ladies at the salon can use them. This hair dyer isn’t the magnificent part; the magnificent part is us men needing something to occupy these women while they are at the salon. Without this hair dryer women aren’t pre occupied so when they having nothing else to do they start to think. The hair dryer is a way to keep women occupied so they don’t begin to think and get together to come up with ideas to help women gain equality. I think that women in today’s society need something to keep them occupied instead of gossiping about their children.

The next scene I like in “The External Feminine” was where Lupita is buying a ticket to the wax museum. This scene is very significant because Lupita experiences how women were seen through the eyes of men, especially dealing with history. They being to play a game where Lupita is suppose to guess what famous historical women they are describing, but the trick to it is that the women are described from the way women see their accomplishments rather than they way men see them. The one example that expressed this issue was the Adam and Eve story. Lupita experiences why was Eve portrayed at the person who did the wrong thing and that Adam ate the forbidden fruit like. Eve is portrayed to be the forbidder and the one distracting Adam from this forbidden fruit. The hawker explains that there should be a bit of moral practice as well as principle. Eve is shown being submissive, but as shown to Lupita she is far from that. Eve goes as far as to accept God’s wrath because she violates his rules. Adam is shown to have chosen the life and the certain rules to live by what God had set. By Adam taking this one makes Eve seem less superior to him and even in some of the photos that she is below him in superiority. I like this scene because it shows that these famous historical women who have made a difference in society are scene by most men for either doing something wrong or even doing nothing at all. Lupita experiences this and realizes that most famous women in history have done something great for women’s future.

In Conclusion, to me Castellanos wants the reader to see that women in history have mad an impact it just that men have portrayed them to be in the wrong. Also I think that Castellanos wants women to think that if women don’t want it to be, then they should do something about. The one thing that was in the back of my mind the whole time I was reading with was patriarchy. Castellanos wants the women who disagree with patriarchy to step up and make a change, to ensure there belief among other women and make a change for women. On the other my feeling is that if women make their own decision based off their non belief of patriarchy, it would almost like they were going against the norm. The main thing is that women would be going against the norm and even the social norm and this is what women don’t want in today’s society.